Analysis of Film Openings- Drama Genre

Conventions to take note of:

• Shot sizes
• Shot angles
• Shot durations
• Transitions and overall pace
• Sound effects
• Use of music
• Title fonts and colours
• Colour palette and lighting
• Setting
• Types of characters and their contexts
• Storyline/ plot development
• Overall tone/ mood/ atmosphere

Film 1- 'The Judge'

• Guitar music starts playing with black screen
• Opening shot- close up of glasses
• Close ups- low-key lighting, earthy colours, warm
• Font- white, all capitals, clear
• Establishing shot- long shot
• Long shot- showing setting of scene
• Music with faster pace/busy- busy place
• Mens toilets- bright lights/cool- represent his character
• Wearing a suit- character is a lawyer
• High angle/ over the shoulder shot- he is important

Film 2- 'Forrest Gump'

• Opening shot- long duration- set slow pace
• Calm piano music
• Ambient sound- when feather gets to the ground
• Font- white, clear
• Bright lights and warm colours 
• Setting- city/ large town
• Characters waiting at bus stop
• Forrest- simple character
• Tone- warm, not threatening

Film 3- 'The Time Travellers Wife'

• Opens with violin music
• Oprah singing- warm and happy
• Low-key lighting- night time
• Warm colours
• Christmas time- snowing
• Ambient sounds- cars/crashing/window smashes- sharp sounds
• Font- yellow text on dark screen
• Transitions- slower at beginning and get quicker
• Eye level camera angles
• Smaller shot sizes
• After accident- longer shot sizes
• Overall tone- tense, threatening, worried for boy.

Film 4- 'The Descendants'

• Loud ambient sounds before we see what is happening
• Close up and long duration of woman on speedboat
• Slow fade out
• Ukelele in background- happy and upbeat- contrast to what is happening
• Narration
• Hawaii setting- flowers on background
• Character- findout who they are from the voice-over
• Long shots of people in Hawaii
• Tone- grim

Film 5- 'The Age Of Adelaine'

• Tense, slow music in opening
• Narrator
• High angle/ birds eye angle of city
• Font- white, small, non-intrusive, handwriting-type
• Characters- Adelaine- mysterious, smart, not a cop
• Overall tone- serious, mysterious, intriguing

Film 6- 'Life of Pi'

• Establishing shot- long shot
• Music- calm and cultural
• High-key lighing- bright
• Setting- zoo; animals and cages
• Font- traditional, white/yellow
• Very slow pace
• No characters yet (3 minutes in)
• Overall tone- relaxing, calm

Genre Analysis (Thriller) - BFI Statistical Yearbook

BFI Statistical Yearbook- Genre Information
In order to amass quantitative data on the Thriller genre, we have referred to the BFI’s 2016 Statistical Yearbook as it is far beyond the scope of any survey that we could ever hope to conduct. In the BFI’s own words, ‘The Statistical Yearbook presents in one place all the available statistics on UK film and the UK film industry.’

Analysis

• The Thriller genre grossed £37.1 million, which amounts to 2.9% of all money grossed at the box office.
• Taken 3 was the top performing Thriller film of 2015.
• There were a total of 52 Thriller films released, amounting to 6.9% of the total number of films released in 2015.
• Taken 3 was number 18 for the box office results for the top 20 films in the UK and Ireland.

Significance

The Thriller genre was not most popular in demand in 2015 among the British public, as it was the tenth highest in the average box office gross per site. Taken 3 was the most popular Thriller of 2015 and was given a '12A' certificate, giving us a clear idea of our potential target audience. However, we also find out that 40% of the film's audience were aged 15-24 which may also be used as helpful as we know that this age group are more likely to watch thrillers. 

We do not find out the difference in percentage of the male and female audience, but we would most likely presume that there would be a significantly greater number of male viewers due to the stereotype of men preferring horror and thriller genre films.

The Registrar General's Social Scale
The Registrar General’s Social Scale is the way the British Government defines the populace through their occupation:

A benefit of the Registrar General’s Social Scale is that it can help companies to target audiences. However, the scale has been criticised for being both crude and rigid.

BFI Statistical Yearbook: Films with Above Average Shares of Audience Members from Specific Groups of the Registrar General's Social Scale:

Significance

Out of all the films that feature in this portion of the survey, the production we have in mind has most in common with Taken 3, which was the most popular film amongst members of the audience from the DE category. 

Storyboard for Preliminary Task

Script for Preliminary Task

MISS JONES

Come in Miss Brown.

KAYLEIGH walks through the door and simultaneously sits down along with MISS JONES

KAYLEIGH

Hi, nice to meet you, I am Kayleigh Brown and - - -

MISS JONES

(interrupts) Stop blabbering and let's get into this, I have wasted far too much time today on interviewing candidates for this post. I see you have a degree in English - - -

Camera tilts down and tilts back up at a different point in the interview 

KAYLEIGH

- - and due to this I have had a lot of experience working with children in a classroom set up.

MISS JONES

Everything is looking good so far (pause, close up on documents as she turns the page) so when were you planning on telling me about your criminal record, before or after you got the job?

Close up on KAYLEIGHs face to show her emotion

KAYLEIGH

Urmmmmmmm (clears throat) but it isn't going to affect my chances of getting this job (pause) - - - will it?

MISS JONES

(raises voice) You will have a huge influence on these children of course it is going to affect this! (pause) I am sorry but this is not acceptable - - - your application has been denied.

Basic Treatment for Preliminary Task

Working title
Criminal

Synopsis
A woman goes for a job interview as a teacher but the criminal record she thought was in her past comes back to haunt her.

Characters
There is the interviewer called Miss Jones who is a strict and unforgiving head teacher of a well-known comprehensive school. The interviewee, Kayleigh Brown, is a recent university graduate with a degree in English.

Film Techniques
We will film this with a DSLR camera using a variety of different techniques including; tracking shot, over the shoulder shot, two shot, match on action, tilts, zooms and close-ups and 180-degree-shot.

Production Considerations
We intend to film this in our school, using a classroom set up and making use of simply a desk and a chair. Additional props will be included such as folders and paperwork to make it more realistic.

Introduction to the DSLR

Introduction to the DSLR

• DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex.
• It basically means a camera with on lens and a mirror which reflects the light, where pictures are recorded on a digital card instead of film. 

• To get started, it's best to use the automatic settings to get accustomed to the camera:
• set the dial to the green automatic mode.
• make sure the lens is set to AF (autofocus) and not MF (manual focus).
• push the shutter button down halfway- the camera will automatically focus on the subject.
• push the button down the rest of the way to take the picture.

• Canon: Outside of Auto
• a great online tool that lets you play around with a virtual DSLR and the three primary camera settings: ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

• Exposure
• exposure is the amount of light a digital camera's sensor captures when a photo is taken.
• too much light results in a washed out photo (overexposed).
• too little light and the photo will be too dark (underexposed).
• a camera's aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings directly affect exposure, but more importantly, they allow you to control how each photo will look.

• Aperture
• the aperture settings control the size of the lens opening that allows light into your camera.
• you can blur the foreground and background that bracket your subject (known as shallow depth of field) by opening up the aperture with a low f-stop number.

• Shutter Speed
• the shutter speed setting controls how long the shutter opens to expose the image sensor to that light.
• open it for just a millisecond and you can freeze a fast moving subject.
• alternatively, you can show the movement of a fast moving subject by keeping iy open longer with a slow shutter speed. 

• ISO
• the ISO is how sensitive your image sensor is to light.
• with the ISO setting, a camera's image sensor can be adjusted to detect more, or less light as needed for a good exposure.
• the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor will be, and the brighter the image will be.
• the lower the ISO, the less light it's going to bring in, and the darker the image is going to be.
• if you're shooting in low-light, you will want to boost your ISO so that the image will be brigher.
• if you're shooting in a bright, sunny place, you'll want to lower your ISO, or the image will be overly-bright.
• high ISO will cause graininess so as a rule, use the lowest ISO possible. 

Media Language

Media language refers to the ways in which meaning is created in media texts. Below are some of the terms we have been learning about in our AS Media Studies lessons.

Camera:

• Establishing shot: The opening shot in a dramatic scene that establishes the disposition of people and objects in the mise en scene. As such it is usually a wide shot, and is likely to be followed by a succession of closer shot.

• Two-shot: A shot in which two figures appear in the frame.

• Point of View shot: A camera angle in which the viewer seems to see with the eyes of the character in the scene.

• Over the Shoulder shot: A camera shot in which the subject of the shot is filmed from behind a person's head and shoulders, which are framed to one side in the foreground.

• High-angle shot: A camera shot taken from a higher level than the subject, and angled down towards them. This shot can have the effect of diminishing the authority of the subject, making them look weak.

• Low angle shot: A camera shot taken from a lower level than the subject, and angled up at them. This shot can have the effect of enhancing the authority of the subject, making them look powerful.

• Canted angle: A cinematic device where the camera is physically placed at an angle so that vertical and horizontal surfaces appear diagonal.

• Pan: A horizontal camera movement left-to-right or right-to-left on a fixed axis. The word is short for 'panoramic movement'. A pan following a moving object suggests that we are viewing it from the point of view of an observer.

• Tilt: A camera movement up or down on a horizontal axis.

• Tracking shot: A camera movement achieved by mounting the camera on a dolly and moving it along a track. Typically, tracking shots are used to follow characters or other objects in motion.

Sound:

• Diegetic sound: Sound that can be heard by the characters in the world of film.

• Non-diegetic sound: Sound that cannot be heard by the characters in the world of film.

• Synchronous sound: Sound that is directly matched with what is being viewed. 

• Sound bridge: Editing technique in which visual cuts are deliberately not matched with audio cuts. 

• Dialogue: The conversation that happens between characters in a work of fiction, or the lines spoken by actors. 

• Voiceover: A type of non-diegetic, asynchronous sound in which the audience hear a voice that does not have a source either within the frame or within hearing distance and which is not heard by the people on screen. 

• Incidental music: Music used in a film or play as a background to create or enhance a particular atmosphere.

• Stings: A short musical phrase primarily used as a form of punctuation.

• Ambient sound: Sound which is natural to a setting.

Mise en scene:

• Mise-en-scene: The look of a film, derived from its use of sets and settings, lighting, colour, costumes hair and make-up, props, actor movement, and the overall placement and visual composition of these elements by the director. 

• Location: A 'real' place, as opposed to a studio, in which something is filmed or otherwise recorded.

• Set: An interior that has been constructed to look like a real place when filmed; the set helps to identify the time and place in which a narrative will unfold. 

• Costume: The clothes worn by characters in a fictional text. The costumes are part of the mise en scene and as such are an important part of signification (for example, as a generic or period identifier). 

• Make-up: Cosmetics used to change the appearance of a performer. 

• Prop: Short for 'property'. A small item used in a film or TV production to add realism, assist with the narrative or act as a motif. 

• High-key lighting: Lighting which eliminates most of the shadows.

• Low-key lighting: Lighting which emphasises shadows.

Editing:

• Cut: The commonest form of edit in moving image texts, this is the instantaneous change from one shot to another in an edit. 

• Shot/reverse shot: A convention for showing a dialogue sequence. We cut between the two speakers, showing each person's point of view. 

• Eye-line match: A visual code used to make it clear what the subject is looking at

• Graphic match: A compositional device onscreen, whereby objects of common characteristics of shape or colour are used in successful shots. 

• Match on action: Two shots in which an action begun in the first is completed in the second, thus disguising the fact that there has been a cut.

• Dissolve: In editing, a cross-fade between two shots: one fades out as another fades in.

• Wipe: A shot transition in which the new image wipes over the previous one.

• Superimposition: To place one image over the top of another on the screen.

• Long take: Not to be confused with a long shot, a long take is a shot of comparatively long duration.

• Montage: The production of a rapid succession of images in a motion picture, usually accompanied by music, to illustrate an association of ideas or a passing of time.

• Post-production: The various processes that take place after filming in order to create the final cut of a film. 

AS G321: Foundation Portfolio in Media- Overview

My name is Abbie Goddard and I am studying Media Studies at Newlands Girls' School. I will be using this blog to document my AS Media Studies coursework.
For AS G321: Foundation Portfolio in Media, I have been given the following briefs:


Preliminary Exercise
Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.


Main Task
The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

This blog will serve as a record of my progress. It will include the documenting of research and planning, production, post-production, and evaluations.